Free resources for hard times

by Jeanne on 4 April 2020

How is everyone going? A tough time all round. Here are some free resources that some reading sites have given us access to that might help.

Reading Rockets:

We’ve put together a great collection of resources from Reading Rockets and other trusted sources to help jumpstart fun learning experiences for your elementary kids.

On our Start with a Book website you can dig into 24 kid-friendly topics paired with recommended books, hands-on activities, writing ideas, apps, and websites. We’ve also shared activity ideas from our bilingual Growing Readers parent newsletter.

And there are many more fantastic resources to dig into — how to find great audiobooks and ebooks, picture book read alouds on video, “best of” kids media, online art clubs with favorite children’s authors/illustrators, and links to top online learning websites (most offering free access right now). See all resources >

Twinkl:

As the Coronavirus spreads, we’re aware that more schools are closing and pupils’ learning is being disrupted. Parents, carers and teachers are looking for ways to ensure the continuity of education during school closures so that no children miss out on valuable learning time. To support you during this period, Twinkl is offering every teacher free access to all Twinkl resources during periods of school closures, or to help you prepare should closures occur in your area.

This access will be for a period of one month (from 27 March), in the first instance, but we are committed to extending this offer in the event of prolonged closures. This code will also work to upgrade existing memberships to full access, free of charge.

We would also like you to extend this to every parent and carer in your school so your pupils can still have access to high-quality learning during any periods of disruption.

Setting this up is really easy to do:

Spelfabet:

Here’s a free booklet for use in documenting early reading progress and giving credit where it’s due, now many parents with young children are home helping flatten the COVID-19 curve. Download and print it on A4 paper, fold and staple it, and use it to document children’s reading, in two vital categories:

  1. Books your child reads. These should mainly contain the spelling patterns they’ve been taught (decodable books, there are quite a few free or heavily discounted ones available now). Reading such books builds word identification skills, which in turn build reading fluency.
  2. Books you read aloud to your child. These might be stories, books about animals, places, the universe, anything that interests your child but is currently too hard for them to read themselves. This type of reading builds vocabulary and comprehension, and shows kids that reading is awesome.

I hope these are helpful. Please spread the word so that we can all help each other. Does anyone know of any other free resources?

I have just finished my maths program, so I now have three major programs completed (30+ years’ work). I am about to look for ways that I can make these available for free or at a very low cost.

And, of course, you can already find a lot of my free resources at http://successwithreading.com/free-resources/ and http://successwithreading.com/videos-children/

With every blessing,

Jeanne

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